


Cultivation

by Phlyarologist



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:42:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22744216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phlyarologist/pseuds/Phlyarologist
Summary: On a visit to Doma, Celes is inducted into a new hobby.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 17
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Cultivation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [runicmagitek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/runicmagitek/gifts).



“Put up thy sword,” said Cyan, when she had fought him to a standstill, best two out of a close three, and they had exchanged the customary bows. “There is something I would show thee.”

Celes sheathed her blade and followed him into Doma Castle. People had moved in since she'd visited last. Her footsteps didn't echo as sharply as they had on that day. In many ways the town still looked more like a refugee camp than a set habitation, as if people were still ready to flee the next upheaval with everything they owned strapped to their backs. This feeling of impermanence had spilled into the castle proper, too, to an extent, but there were at least a few gestures toward a settled residence. The stone walls were relieved here and there by paintings and woodcuts of nature scenes, only smudged a little by smoke – some people had camped in its halls during that dark year, smashing up chairs for cookfires, but no one had tried it twice. The curse was broken and the castle open to all, but attitudes remained cautiously respectful. In practice, this refuge was only available to the brave or the desperate.

And – apparently – to Celes. It made no sense that she'd been allowed here to see the ghosts driven out, or that she was suffered to enter now. But she set her questions aside. Cyan was leading her up the stairs, past a hall of reception chambers now in use as apartments for dispossessed families, and into a small, sunny room.

Suspiciously sunny, for a room in a defensive structure. Great square windows lined the eastern and western walls. Celes paced over to look – the east side faced the castle's interior courtyard, and the west looked over the widest angle of the moat. Reasonably secure from conventional weapons at this height, but – the shutters were wooden. She gauged the distance to the ground across the moat. Conventional weapons, no, but a well-aimed fireball -

But there would be no more fireballs. With an effort, she relaxed her shoulders. And then felt another twinge of tension, remembering: Doma had fallen anyway.

“Sorry,” she said, only then realizing neither of them had spoken since passing the castle gates. “What did you want me to see?”

“Behind thee,” he said, and she turned. In the center of the room was a circular table, its surface a hard yellow wood with darker inlays. And on it, an asymmetrical arrangement of potted plants. “It is...” Cyan hesitated. “A small project of mine.”

Remembering that cave in Mt. Zozo, she stepped closer to examine the plants. “You don't mean these are silk, too?”

“Oh. Nay. Thou dost – thou payest mine artifice too great a compliment.” He seemed embarrassed at the recollection. “I could not capture such a likeness. Rather – well, do thou look again.”

She looked again. Though not strictly balanced, the placement of each plant seemed deliberate. And the darker inlays in the tabletop traced the outlines of closed shapes, however irregular. Almost as if... She leaned in closer, squinting.

“This likeness of the world is sadly out of date,” said Cyan. “It was so even when the table was made. See how the northern continent is figured so clear, while the contours of thy homeland are vague suggestions only. Did the artisan yet live, we might commission a new, but that person is centuries gone. Still. It is beautiful.”

“It is,” Celes agreed, tracing a squiggly coastline with one fingertip.

“In this, I claim no part. Rather, the trees. Thou wilt not know, perhaps, hailing from abroad -”

“The locations of all the major forests on the continent,” she said. She remembered studying maps of all the places Gestahl meant to subjugate. This had been posed as an academic exercise at the time. How will the terrain affect troop movements? Where might insurgents set up an ambush? None of this had happened in the end, and now no one would possess those lands the way they'd existed then.

That wasn't the point. “Trees,” he'd said. She looked at the plants more closely. Startled, she said, “These are...”

“Bonsai.” Cyan approached the table himself and stood studying them, hands clasped behind his back. “However small, each is a tree, whole and entire. Each hath the shape and character of its larger cousins.”

In the center of the continent, where the mountains of Narshe flattened out toward the desert, a tiny evergreen stood potted in blue gravel, its trunk at an angle – Celes was hardly an expert – either artistic or profoundly skewed. To the west, outside Kohlingen, a tiny maple tree, hand-shaped leaves wider across than its branches. Outside Jidoor -

“That can't possibly be an apricot,” said Celes, and for just an instant, through Cyan's mustache, there flashed a grin of unreserved pride. She shook her head in wonder. “And you grew all of these?”

“I did. It is an ancient art of Doma – we had fairs, once. The cultivators of these trees would gather to display their creations, competing with one another and delighting the public. At those times one could buy anything one needed. Many an initiate was lured into the fold by a canny dealer saying, 'Here is an attractive pot, here is fine gravel, here copper wire, and here thy tree; naught else is needed.'” He turned pensive. His gaze was fixed on the table, but he didn't seem to see it. “Owain was one such. Yet, try as we might between the three of us, the tree would not flourish. A dealer may sell thee all the finest tools and accoutrements, but proper care and patience canst thou buy at no price.”

He'd never spoken to her about his family. She was a splinter of the Empire that had killed them – a machine in a factory that made widows. No, it wasn't his country she'd razed, but if the order had come down, what then?

She watched him in silence, and tried to understand. She tried, and failed, to feel worthy of this gesture. 

“Thou wilt have seen them,” he said at last, looking up again. “The trees stunted by the light of Judgment. It was such a miniature forest that recalled the idea to me. I cannot now ask the people I met at those fairs what to do. But poison toucheth not books. I resolved to learn what I could. And here thou seest my modest progress.”

She touched the tip of a scaly green needle. Her finger came away smelling of winter, and the day she had joined the Returners. On that day Cyan had offered to slit her open, and might have done so if Sabin hadn't pinioned him, speaking quietly but insistently into his ear. Celes blinked, and let the memory fade, and stared at trees. “They're lovely.”

Cyan cleared his throat. “My first twelve attempts were not so. These strains, I think, are... more forgiving to the amateur.”

“Still.” The words hardly seemed enough, but not saying them would have been worse: “Thank you for showing me.”

“Wilt thou take one?”

Celes froze. “What?”

“That juniper, mayhap. It liketh cold, and it needeth less of water than some. It would suit thee.”

“Cyan, I can't possibly -”

“I would account it no loss to myself. I have learned the trick of it, if in part – I will plant others. If it liketh thee, I should be gratified to see it go with thee.”

She stared at him. “What is this about?”

Cyan shook his head. “Thou hast been all thy life a creature of war; I have been the same, for longer. By this token, what I have learnt of peace may be some aid to thee as well.” He paused, and took a breath, and said in a lower voice, “Mine other reason is perhaps more selfish.”

“I'm listening.”

“The Kingdom of Doma is gone,” he said, matter-of-fact, looking her right in the face. She knew that kind of bluntness too well to mistake it for a lack of feeling; it was what happened when you knew something hideous, and you recited it to yourself in your head day in and day out. It was just a product of over-rehearsal. The Kingdom of Doma is gone, he said, and she thought: I burned Maranda. Terra forgot me.

Eventually he went on. “Many more are gone, in the breaking of the world. I have no greater claim than any, but... I would not have us forgotten. I would have something of my homeland go on. I would... I would, I think, be happy to have my friends carry some piece of it with them.”

Celes looked down.

Cyan chuckled. “Foolish, is it not? I have no prior personal connection to this art. I simply seized on the first thing I could point to and say, 'we were known for this -'” He broke off, and looked out the window – into the moat, the far less believably distracting of his options. “Thou needst not gratify my whim. An idle suggestion only.”

“You said it's a juniper?”

“Ah – yes. Dost thou know them?”

“It's an evergreen. It smells nice.” She thought for another few seconds, and then shrugged.

Cyan turned toward her again, putting awkwardness aside. “I called these trees 'forgiving,' but I think I did them injustice – it were better to say they are resilient. This is a type, in miniature, that liveth as well on snowy mountains and in desert plains. The smaller version hath not such exceptional vigor, quite, but” - another fleeting smile - “it holdeth up well enough under the assaults of an inexperienced hand. It needeth but little water, if it be watered daily, and – confidentially I may add that missing one day will not harm it unduly.”

“It could be both,” said Celes, studying the crooked trunk, the spikes of overlapping needles.

“Thy pardon?”

“Tough _and_ forgiving.”

Cyan thought this over, then nodded, rueful. “One might aspire to worse.”

She picked the tree up in its square, black-glazed pot, turning it this way and that.

“There are traditional shapes,” said Cyan. “I could lend thee the books, for examples. But pruning and training such a small thing is simple. With care, thou mayst give it any number of silhouettes.”

Celes thought of Cid's topiaries, painstakingly trimmed into the shapes of animals who would never have survived Vector's smog-filled skies. It hadn't hurt them any, and yet – how old had she been the first time she'd seen a tree in its natural state? Seven? How old would she be when she found a natural state of her own? “I think I'll let it do what it wants.”

Cyan smiled. “I suspected thou wouldst feel so. Still – it may need support, from time to time. Or rebalancing. Thou canst guide it to the better advantage of, ah, what it wanteth.”

“I understand.”

“But – thou wilt take it?”

“I'll be honored to. Just...” A thought had occurred to her, but she wondered if it ought to be voiced. If it was the kind of thing that a person could say under the circumstances, or if she was the kind of person who said it. “One suggestion?”

“Of course.”

She set the tree down – momentarily wondering what kind of new artistic arrangement Cyan would have to devise for the remaining trees once she'd removed it – and went to the courtyard window. Two teenagers were tussling in the grass below. A woman was writing in a small notebook. When she listened closely Celes could hear, in the distance, someone playing a stringed instrument very badly but with great determination.

She said, “It doesn't have to just be you. These people – their old homes won't come back, either.” She looked back at Cyan. “But you could teach them about their new one. If they can't keep their old traditions, you can give them yours. If they don't know where they're going, you can tell them where they are. They're already here – I think they'll listen.” She turned to the window again and said in an undertone, “People want to belong, right?”

There was a long silence, broken only by the occasional shout of triumph from the kids fighting in the yard, or whatever awful thing some distant stranger was doing to a violin.

Then Cyan came to stand at her shoulder. “Dame Celes. Thou hast spoken aright. I thank thee. The people I knew of old will never tread these halls more – but someone will. And if I cannot give any back the world that was lost...” He sighed, but he didn't sound unhappy. 

At length he said, “Knowest thou whither thou wilt go next?” and she heard the unvoiced invitation: she could stay, if she chose.

But choosing seemed too final, just now. “That depends,” she said, tossing a glance over her shoulder at the juniper tree. “Does my new friend have any special requirements?”

“Only water, as I said. Ah – and good sunlight. Of that I wish thee plenty.”

Celes smiled. “You, too.” She returned to the table, and picked up the tree. An entire tree, between her two hands – and more than that, it was a forest neither she nor Kefka had destroyed. It was a tiny piece of an ancient legacy. It was growing, in its crooked angles, toward the future.

“Take thou good care of it. If it is not immodest in me to say so – it hath great potential.”

“I will. At your next bonsai fair, let's compare notes.”

“But -” he began, frowning, and then stopped. “Ah. Yes. Yes, I take thy point. Doma will be happy to receive thee then.”

**Author's Note:**

> Heya! Sorry this treat is coming at you late; I got wrapped up in doing a bunch of research about trees ... most of which didn't even make it into the final draft, the more fool me. :D


End file.
